WRECKING RELIGION: Doubt, Deconstruction, & Jesus
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The disciples of Jesus were the original deconstructionists.
They refused to blindly follow their own religious leaders, they questioned their religious institutions, they rethought their understanding of Scripture, and they walked away from their religious tradition in order to build something new, beautiful, and life-giving.
And I think these first-century believers have something to teach all of us 21st century strugglers. If you or someone you know is experiencing doubt, deconstruction, or just full on disbelief, then welcome. This space is made for you. And I'd love to hear some of your story in the comments. And if you're not on the spectrum of deconstruction, give it time - Jesus can help you get there.
But before we dive in, let's define deconstruction.
Deconstruction is the process of critically examining, questioning, and possibly dismantling one's own accepted religious beliefs. At its best, deconstruction not only asks "How much can I tear down?" but also, "What deserves to remain standing?"
Some people deconstruct their faith all the way to atheism.
Others deconstruct their atheism all the way to faith.
And still others deconstruct their religion as a way to save their faith.
In the world of the construction trades, "deconstruction" means taking a structure apart carefully to salvage what's reusable. This is different from demolition. Jesus was a tektōn (Mark 6:3), a "builder" (sometimes translated "carpenter"), and he would know the difference. Deconstruction doesn't have to be demolition. In fact, there is always something worth salvaging even while walking away from an obsolete system.
And that's important. Not all deconstruction leads to deconversion. Deconstruction can be a season of questioning that leads to renovation and renewal into something more healthy, whole, purified, simplified, more personally meaningful, and more Jesusy (see 1 Thessalonians 5:19-21).
A particular form of deconstruction is so common today that it even has its own name: Exvangelicalism.
The term "exvangelical" was coined by Blake Chastain in 2016 and quickly became a banner for people leaving conservative evangelical religion. This is the deconstruction I am most interested in, since it touches on my background, describes people I know, and reflects my own experience. And, Evangelicals never saw it coming. We knew people left the Catholic Church or mainline Protestantism to become Evangelical Born Again Christians; but we never expected to see a flood of people converting out of the Evangelical Church.
But it's happening. Statistics Canada reports that the share of those identifying as Christian fell from 77.1% in 2001 to 53.3% in 2021, while those reporting no religious affiliation more than doubled, from 16.5% to 34.6%. These numbers are not specifically referring to Evangelical Christianity, but they include the exvangelical exodus. This is worth talking about.
Here's what lies ahead...
PART 1: THE ORIGINAL DECONSTRUCTIONISTS
(New Wineskins for New Wine)
PART 2: WHEN THE BIBLE BREAKS
(Some Reasons People Deconstruct Today)
PART 3: WHEN THE CHURCH BREAKS YOU
(More Reasons People Deconstruct Today)
PART 4: MY THREE DECONSTRUCTIONS
(A Personal Journey)
PART 5: PEACE ON THE OTHER SIDE
(From Deconstruction to Renovation)
Now let's begin at the beginning...
PART 1: THE ORIGINAL DECONSTRUCTIONISTS
(New Wineskins for New Wine)
Jesus used an analogy of wine and wineskins that is helpful for us to understand the radical change he would usher in through the New Covenant:
No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved. ~ JESUS (Matthew 9:16-17)
In his first analogy - the cloth and the patch - it sounds like the New Covenant needs to adapt to the old, to be preshrunk so it can serve the needs of the old garment. But that isn't the point (which the second analogy makes clear). In both word pictures, the point is mutual incompatibility. You can't domesticate the new to serve the old, and you can't force the old to contain the new. Don't even try because it won't end well.
Look at Luke's version of the same teaching:
No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, ‘The old is better.’ ~ JESUS (Luke 5:36-39)
Here it is more clear that Jesus is saying, don't use the new to patch up the old. That approach will ruin both. Instead, throw out the old (garment or wineskin) and fully embrace the new.
The New Covenant is too alive and active (fermenting). If you bottle it up in the old, it will expand and blow the old apart. If we try to blend the Old and New Covenants, we don't get a fixed coat and preserved wine - we get a ruined wardrobe and grape shrapnel.
The radical nature of the New Covenant is that it refuses to be an accessory to the old one. The New Covenant demands complete and total realignment. And for the first followers of Jesus, that realignment would include a deconstruction of their current religious convictions to make room for a new way of being in relationship with God and one another.
And this was not easy. In Luke's version of this teaching, Jesus ends with an explanation: most people will prefer the old wine. Notice, Jesus doesn't say that people prefer the old after they have tasted the new. He says they prefer the old wine when the old is all they have been drinking. The word translated "better" in this passage is different in the earliest manuscripts: it is the word for "good" as in, "What I already have is good enough". People are not making a comparison, since they never try the new. They are saying that what they have is good enough for them and they aren't interested in something new God might be up to.
Psychologists call this "Status Quo Bias" - we tend to favour what already exists because change feels like loss. It takes a significant amount of bravery to question the traditions we have been raised with. And Jesus knows this.
Jesus knows people. He knows we prefer the known, the safe, and the predictable over the unknown, the risky, and the unpredictable. We are nostalgic; we are sentimental; we are risk-averse; we are cautious. These aren't bad things, but they can be deadly when they keep us from being open to the future God has for us.
Jesus is helping free us all from what has become known as the "Sunk Cost Fallacy". Psychologically, when someone invests their entire life, social circle, and identity into a particular worldview, walking away feels like losing a massive investment. To protect their ego, they double down on the old wine, even when it's turning to vinegar.
So, like a mama bird pushing her babies out of the nest, Jesus pushed his disciples out of their comfort zones (Deuteronomy 32:11 pictures God like an eagle stirring up the nest, while remaining ready to catch and carry us if we fall instead of fly. I love that.) He would not allow them to simply add the New Covenant way of the Spirit to their Old Covenant lives, like seasoning to a meal or like a new accessory to their already established religion. The New Covenant was never intended to be bolted onto the Old Covenant as a kind of covenant enhancement module.
The New Covenant replaced the Old. And so, in order to fully enter the New Covenant, the Old Covenant had to be left behind.
By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear. (Hebrews 8:13)
Obsolete. Outdated. Disappearing. That's how the New Covenant describes the Old Covenant. And with the destruction of the Temple and the cessation of sacrifices in 70 AD, the Old Covenant would indeed disappear from any biblically recognizable form.
To be clear, while the Jewish covenant disappeared, the Jewish people remain precious and loved by God and our treasured source for understanding our own faith in Jesus the Messiah (Romans 11:28-29).
Jesus prepared his followers for the eventual end of their sacrificial system in a variety of ways, including directly prophesying the Temple's destruction (Matthew 24). And in Matthew 9:13 he quotes Hosea 6:6, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice," as a statement worth pondering. After the Temple fell, Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai used the same verse, Hosea 6:6, to console a grieving student. He told the student that they still had an atonement as effective as sacrifice - acts of lovingkindness. Jews believe that, without a Temple, they are not responsible for making animal sacrifices, so atonement comes through repentance, prayer, and acts of compassion. Christians believe animal sacrifices were made redundant because of Jesus as the final sacrifice. Either way, both communities rebuilt around mercy.
But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ ~ JESUS (Matthew 9:13)
As an aside, try referencing Hebrews 8:13 casually in a conversation with a more conservative Christian and see where the conversation goes:
"Well Bob, I might agree with you if I didn't think that a large part of the Bible describes a way of living that is already obsolete and outdated."
"Fred! What are you saying? The whole Bible is the Word of God!"
"Oh, sorry to sound so sacrilegious Bob. I was just quoting the Bible."
Or try this version...
"Well Bob, I might agree with you if I didn't think that the New Testament is better than the Old Testament."
"Fred! What are you saying? The whole Bible is God's Word!"
"Oh, sorry Bob. I was just quoting the Bible."
Alright alright. Let's nuance this a bit.
It's true that the New Testament says the New Covenant is "better" than the Old Covenant (Hebrews 7:18-19, 22; 8:6). And both covenants agree that the Old Covenant was not perfect and was not meant to endure (Jeremiah 31:31–32; Hebrews 8:7).
Yes, the Old Covenant is outdated; the Bible says so. At the same time, the Old Testament scriptures continue to be relevant as a pointer to Jesus.
As Law, the Torah is obsolete.
As Scripture, the Old Testament lives on (because it continues to offer a context and witness to Jesus).
That's why Christian Bibles contain both the Old and New Testaments. We can learn from the Old Testament, but we are not under the Old Covenant.
While reading the entire Bible, just remember that the Bible presents a before-and-after picture, with Jesus being the pivot point. (And to drive this point home further, if we are not Jewish, the Old Covenant was never ours to begin with.)
The first generation of Christ-followers, who were almost entirely Jewish, had to deconstruct their religious allegiance in a few key areas:
TRIBE: Being ethnically Jewish made them God's holy people.
TERRITORY: Israel was God's holy land and God would one day once again lead them in holy war to protect it.
TRADITION: Holiness practices, like ritualistic hand-washing, kept God's people clean from the contamination of regular sinners. And the Sabbath (Saturday) was a holy day of rest, and a strict fence around the law kept people from transgressing.
TORAH: The Law of Moses was their guide to living a holy life.
TEMPLE: The Temple was God's holy house, with the Holy of Holies symbolizing his special manifest presence among Israel.
TITLE: The priests were God's holy leaders and spiritual mediators. And all spiritual leaders deserved special seats, special clothing, and special titles.
TRADE: In the old system, we traded the life of an animal for our own, the blood of an animal for God's forgiveness. (Ya, this is the only "T" word that is a stretch. It should really be SACRIFICE. But please don't blame an alliteration-addicted former pastor for trying!)
TABLE: This point bookends the first. Dietary and purity practices had become powerful boundary markers that could make table fellowship between Jews and Gentiles difficult or even unacceptable.
Now, all of this lived out in community provided first-century Jews with what sociologist Peter L. Berger called a "Plausibility Structure" (The Sacred Canopy, 1967). He pointed out that people don't just hold onto ideas in a vacuum. We are not just beliefs in brains, we are beings, living out our beliefs in the world where we look for cues to reinforce that we're on the right track.
A "plausibility structure" is the network of relationships, rituals, institutions, and daily habits that makes a worldview feel more self-evident. If you are surrounded by people who all believe the same thing, sing the same songs, and respect the same authorities, your belief feels more plausible.
So Jesus was calling his disciples, not just to change their theology, but to completely dismantle their social architecture, their "plausibility structure", and replace it with citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.
And by the way, this is the exact reason modern deconstruction can be so profoundly painful. When we deconstruct, we aren’t just intellectually changing our minds about the age of the earth or the nature of hell or the metaphysics of the atonement or the doctrine of inerrancy.
It's more than that. When we deconstruct, our plausibility structure is breaking. We might find ourselves losing friends, Sunday routines, trusted authority figures, and social safety nets. It feels like the world is ending because, sociologically speaking, our world is ending.
And yes, those of us who have embraced the New Covenant way of Jesus also have our own plausibility structure. Everyone does. But Jesus replaced his disciples' religious plausibility structure with a relational one. And that makes all the difference.
In the New Covenant, everything changes:
TRIBE: There is no distinction between race or nationality. Together, Jew and Gentile, we are one holy nation, one family of faith. (Galatians 3:28; Ephesians 2:14-16; Philippians 3:4–8)
TERRITORY: The whole world is God's holy land. The Kingdom of Christ is without borders or boundaries. (Luke 17:20-21; John 4:21-24; 18:36; Romans 4:13)
TRADITION: Purity practices like ritualistic hand-washing were made redundant when Jesus turned the holy water into wedding wine (John 2:1-11). Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath, and he said that the Sabbath was made to serve us, not us to serve the rules of the Sabbath. Fences were torn down, and even celebrating on Sundays or any day is equally wonderful (Mark 2:27; 7:1-4, 8-9; Romans 14:5-6; Colossians 2:8, 16-17, 20-23; 1 Peter 1:18).
TORAH: Jesus is the Word of God and he was not trying to extend but to end the reign of law in favour of the way of love. The Law of Moses may have been inspired, but now it is retired. (Matthew 5:17-48; Mark 7:19; Romans 10:4; Galatians 3:23-25; 2 Corinthians 3)
TEMPLE: We are the Temple of the Holy Spirit. Hence, Jesus decentralized and deinstitutionalized worship. Now, instead of gathering at a special holy building called the temple, we gather around a table with friends and family. The early Church gathered in homes, because the holy space was not the place but the people. (1 Corinthians 3:16; 2 Corinthians 6:16; Ephesians 2:19-22; 1 Peter 2:5)
TITLE: We are all a royal priesthood, spiritual helpers to one another. (Matthew 23:8-10; 1 Timothy 2:5; 1 Peter 2:5, 9)
TRADE: Through Jesus, God both gave and received the last sacrifice for sin. Now we are forgiven by grace - a gift we receive by faith. Now our lives are a living sacrifice; not to get God's grace, but as an expression of gratitude for what is already ours. (Mark 11:15-17; Romans 12:1; Hebrews 9:12; 10:18-22; 13:15; 1 Peter 2:5)
TABLE: Jesus declared all foods clean. Because he fulfilled and finished kosher dietary laws, table fellowship among Jews and Gentiles has been opened to all. (Mark 7:19; Acts 10; Galatians 2:11-14)
He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. (Hebrews 9:12)
As Christians, this radical pivot, this courageous deconstruction of the Old to walk boldly into the New, is our heritage. And it all came to a climax during dinner...
On the night he was betrayed, Jesus shockingly reconfigured the symbolism of the Passover meal. He said the bread was his body broken for us and the cup was his blood shed for us. And this, Jesus said, would usher in the New Covenant - a new way of being in relationship with God and with each other. Then Jesus radicalized the symbolism even more. He didn't just tell his disciples to break the bread and pour out the wine to illustrate his broken body and shed blood. He told them to eat and drink.
The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. (1 Corinthians 11:23-26)
I sometimes picture this moment at the Last Supper as the classic movie prop gag called a "spit-take" - when someone hears something shocking while drinking and sprays their mouthful in surprise.
Eating bread that is supposed to be someone's body, even symbolically, is a strange cannibalistic sacrament. In fact, Roman critics accused the early Christians of being a cannibalistic cult. (They also accused them of being atheists, because they rejected the Roman gods.) Both Jewish and Gentile Jesus-followers were willing to be wildly misunderstood for the cause of Christ.
And drinking wine that is supposed to be someone's blood, even if symbolically, is an absolute renunciation of religious priorities for any faithful Jew. The Torah was clear - blood must be drained, food must be kosher (Genesis 9:4; Leviticus 3:17; 7:26-27; 17:11, 14; etc.). Blood was not eaten as a routine part of any meal because blood was the symbol of life, the symbol of covenant (Exodus 24:8).
I picture Jesus waiting until the disciples have a mouthful of wine to say the words: "This is my blood." Cue the spit-take.
And here's the thing - Jesus could have put the emphasis on him giving his life for us, not on the disciples receiving it. He could have held the cup up high and said, "This cup is the New Covenant in my blood shed for you" and then poured it out on the floor. That would have been a fine symbol. Sure, Communion services in churches today would be a bit more messy, but the point of Jesus pouring out his life and his love for us would be clear. Jesus instead takes it one step further: His life would be given, his blood would be shed AND we must receive his gift of life and love into our hearts.
For the disciples to listen to Jesus and to eat and drink his "flesh" and his "blood" was to say goodbye to all that they knew in order to follow the new way of the New Covenant. This was absolute totalizing deconstruction of one way of being in this world in order to reconstruct a new way of being in this world.
Jesus had talked about eating his flesh and drinking his blood once before and it lost him some followers (John 6 - which we'll come back to in Part 4). But apparently the message was important enough for him to double down and drive home his point.
This instant decision to eat and drink still took time for the disciples to wrap their heads and hearts around. In passages like Acts 10, Acts 15, and Galatians 2, we see that the apostles still needed prompting from the Holy Spirit and one another to fully appreciate and embrace all the implications of the New Covenant. The decision to deconstruct may happen in an instant, but the process of always renewing and realigning our faith is ongoing.
Today, every time we have Communion or the Eucharist or the Lord's Supper, we declare our irreligious deconstructionist courageous commitment to the deinstitutionalized and radical way of Jesus. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
And catch this: to the extent that the Christian religion has wandered off course and adopted more of an Old Covenant mentality (law over love and tradition over Spirit-led boldness, etc.), then deconstruction can be a form of God-inspired protest. Challenging the status quo of any Church movement that has not embraced New Covenant principles in full is less of a threat and, at least potentially, more of an act of repentance, rethinking, renewal, recalibration, and return to the Way of Jesus.
So maybe, just maybe, many of those Christians today who are deconstructing their faith are becoming the healthiest version of themselves. After all, if Jesus taught his way of living to his Church, and his church got off course, then deconstructing the beliefs of the Church may be a way of getting back to Jesus.
The sociologist Max Weber coined the phrase "the Routinization of Charisma" to describe what can happen to any great movement over time. (The German word for "Routinization" is Veralltäglichung, literally "everyday-ification.") Finding a routine is not in itself a bad thing - routines and traditions can help pass beliefs and practices on to the next generation. But it can also work against what made the movement dynamic at the start. Over time, humans inevitably build bureaucracies around the core dynamism that drew them to the movement in the first place. And eventually protecting something that was built in order to preserve and promote the mission becomes the mission itself.
We must wrestle with the possibility, maybe even the inevitability, of even new wineskins eventually becoming old, rigid, calcified, and unable to carry the charismatic spark of Jesus.
Often, people really do meet Jesus and become renewed by his Gospel through a particular Christian institution or tradition - a denomination or church or Christian organization. Then, because they have had a genuine spiritual encounter within that structure, they sacralize the structure so the next generation can have the identical experience. Except, the Spirit blows where the Spirit wants (John 3:8). Once you close all the windows to contain the breath of the Spirit, the wind disappears.
So the routinization of charisma can devolve into institutional preservation. And I have lived long enough now to have witnessed this happening in my lifetime: a new organization is birthed with energy and excitement; it grows and becomes more and more structured to maintain the growth, and eventually the structure becomes sacrosanct and institutional preservation overrides the Gospel. The mission shifts from using the institution to help people to using people to preserve the institution. This is a sad thing, but it should not be a surprising thing.
The early church built its own fences fast. The Didache (8:1) tells Christians not to fast on Mondays and Thursdays "with the hypocrites" (the days the religious Jews fasted) - instead they should fast Wednesdays and Fridays to show how different they are. Same cage for a new bird, within a century.
Today we find ways to rebuild what Jesus tore down:
TRIBE: We divide over denominational or theological absolutism (e.g., Reformed churches that teach "Doctrines of Grace" are the gospel; Pentecostal churches that teach speaking in tongues is a must for all Christians; Egalitarian and Complimentary churches that dismiss the other as not caring about Scripture; Peace Churches that wear nonviolence like a merit-badge; etc.); and we divide according to political affiliations and expectations ("How can you love Jesus and still vote that way?").
TERRITORY: Some Christians speak about their own earthly nation as a "Christian country", which is purely Old Testament thinking. There is no such thing as a Christian country, only Christian (or non-Christian) people.
TRADITION: We rebuild fences around the law in a variety of ethical expectations regarding everything from dress codes to gender norms to musical tastes to movie styles to Bible translations.
TORAH: We equate the Bible with the "Word of God" and promote a "flat" reading of Scripture where everything in the Bible is given equal weight as our guide for life. We forget that the Bible is not our guide for life. The Bible is our guide to Jesus, and Jesus is our guide for life.
TEMPLE: We return to holy architecture language when we call a church building the "church", the room where services happen as the "sanctuary", and the table at the front of the sanctuary as the "altar".
TITLE: We rebuild our own version of the professional priesthood, where church members become spectators and pastors become performers.
TRADE: We may no longer rely on animal sacrifices for forgiveness, but we do create concrete avenues to obtain God's grace - an altar call, the sinners prayer, or finding the right mode of baptism. When we trade orthodox beliefs and maximized morality in order to obtain God's love, we have traded grace in favour of Performance Based Approval (PBA), and it is the great sickness of the Church.
TABLE: Conservative churches narrow the table by making various kinds of "sinners" less welcome in community life (the Matthews of the world). And progressive churches tend to pursue justice over righteousness (see our article here for the distinction), narrowing table fellowship in ways that attempt to win secular approval at the cost of our New Covenant emphasis on mercy for those who fumble, flounder, fail, and fall short (the Peters of the world).
So, perhaps it is people who are once again open to the teaching of Jesus and the leading of the Holy Spirit, even if subconsciously, who are leaving the Church in search of a better spirituality. The Church told them to be courageous in their stand for truth, and so they courageously pursued truth - right out the door of the Church.
Deconstruction in its purest form is not something Christians should fear. Deconstruction is how our faith started in the first place. Deconstruction is our origin story. And deconstruction, if it leads to renovation and renewal, will be our way forward.
Many of today's deconstructionists, like our spiritual forefathers, are leaving religion to follow Jesus.
So now what? Besides reading/watching the rest of this series, here are some suggestions:
Test the New Wine of the New Covenant. Read the Sermon on the Mount and try to live in light of it even just a little. Notice the difference it begins to make. (And if you need help understanding any of it, our studies on 1820LIFE.com are there for you.)
Find your New Wineskins. Jesus didn't say the antidote to old brittle wineskins is no wineskins. He said we need new wineskins. Whatever we believe, we will live it out more meaningfully when we are embedded within a plausibility structure - a reinforcing communal expression of our beliefs. Who is your spiritual community? What is your "Church"? How do you practice your spiritual tradition? Give your growing faith the wineskin it deserves. Get connected with others on the same journey. An easy way to begin doing this is to share this article with someone you know who might find it interesting and talk about it.
Get in touch. Really. Write me at theghostof1820@gmail.com and let's talk. Sometimes we fail to move forward because we are uncertain about the next step. I'd be happy to help with that. So here it is - your next step. Let's talk.
At the beginning of this article I said that, at its best, deconstruction not only asks "How much can I tear down?" but also, "What deserves to remain standing?" For me, Jesus is the last man standing. What about for you? What's your deconstruction story? Is it about you or a loved one? Are you learning any lessons you can share? The comments are open!
I'm looking forward to walking through the rest of this series together. If you know of someone who this might be helpful for, please share it with them. We'll see you back here in a week.
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